Jose Mourinho has declared that Chelsea would be out of the title race already if they were in any other league. The Blues’ 2-1 home loss to Crystal Palace in the fourth game of the season leaves them eight points off the pace set by the league leaders Manchester City.
Mourinho said, “Four points in four matches is a very bad start. In another league I would say game over. In the Premier League I don’t say game over. We have eight points less than the leader. This is the Premier League and I think it’s getting more difficult than before”.
Bakary Sakho opened the scoring for Chelsea before Radamel Falcao’s equaliser opened his Premier League account with the defending Premier League champions. Chelsea remained on level terms for just two minutes, however, with Joel Ward condemning Jose Mourinho to just his second home defeat in his 100th game as manager of the London club.
The self-proclaimed Special One also suggested that he’s likely to ring the changes in the Chelsea starting line up when they place Everton after the international break saying, “I’m not happy. I cannot say that I had 11 players performing at the same time. Two or three of them, their individual performance was far from good. I blame myself for not changing one of them. I kept him in the game for 90 minutes. If a player is not performing there are two ways of looking at it. One way is that I trust so much the player that I’m going to wait for the improvement. Or even trusting the players arrives a moment where you think I have to change. I can go both ways”.
Despite feeling that Chelsea deserved a ‘clear penalty’, Mourinho was keen to give Crystal Palace credit where it was due. He said, “The first thought is to Palace. They come with everything. They were lucky but they deserve the luck.
My team, I think we deserved more. I don’t want to say we deserved to win, because it’s not true”.